s Faiz Festival approaches, Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s work seems to be just as relevant as it was when he was going through his struggle to establish an equitable system in the country. He wore many hats being an educationist, a poet, a cultural administrator and a journalist. In certain capacities his role was more overtly political than others. He was a marked man and had to endure much that is not the lot of poets alone. Even his stay in Beirut, where he edited Lotus, was seen by many to as a political choice.

Over the years, such festivals have become hugely popular. They continue to attract large, diverse audiences. The usual format is individual or group talks as intellectuals, writers, poets, artistes and musicians express themselves mostly in words about the various issues that characterise our age. Such has been the popularity of these events that these are not only held in major cities of the country- Lahore, Karachi and Islamabad - but also many smaller cities and towns. This may have been unthinkable only a few years ago that these cities/ towns could host events with such active participation from those residing elsewhere.

For a number of reasons, some more obvious than others, the usual trend has been a movement from the villages and small towns to larger urban centres. These cities provide more, greater opportunities and platforms for expression as well as educational and cultural facilities not available in the smaller towns in the past. Nor were the means of communication as afforadable and readily available as there are now.

Faiz Ahmed Faiz was born in Kala Qadir, a village now in Narowal district. Earlier, it had been in the Sialkot district. Sialkot has thus been celebrated as a place that gave birth to two of the greatest Urdu poets of the 2oth Century. But following the administrative rearrangements, the village now falls in Narowal. Like Iqbal before him, Faiz first moved to Sialkot and then to Lahore. It was eventually Lahore and Government College that nurtured the creative energies of these two outstanding individuals like those of many others who in the end did not become that famous.

Like Iqbal before him, Faiz first moved to Sialkot and then to Lahore. It was eventually Lahore and Government College that nurtured the creative energies of these two outstanding individuals like that of many others who did not in the end become that famous.

Pakistan is still in search of an order that epitomises all that is considered civilized in the present context. The political questioning and positioning has been more prominent than the continuation of a system that is workable and ought to be persisted with. Many of the settled issues are reopened not in the pursuit of a more just order but due to individual impatience or narrow self-interest.

Overtly or covertly, the tone of these festivals is often political. This year, the festival will follow close behind the general elections and is likely to be overly political in its complexion. The nation has been obsessed with politics and is hugely attracted to it, sadly at the expense of the other building blocks of its identity that need to be recognised and fortified. The structure of politics will only be sustainable once these blocks are strong and durable.

The relationship between politics and the arts is often a vexed one - it has to rest between its overuse and total absence. Most poets, writers, artistes and painters have found it difficult to strike the right balance between the two. Their expression seems either tied down by politics or just floats around the waves of pure aesthetics. The coming together of the two at some point is desirable. However, that point is not a fixed and a predetermined one. If it were so, it would be easy, if mechanical, to aim for it. But the dynamics and the dialectics of the two is the point that every writer and artiste has to discover and reveal. It will not be far from the truth to say that Faiz was able to hit upon the elusive point. This allowed his work to be so consistent in his core ideas and still highly pleasing to the aesthetic sensibility.

The writer is a culture critic based in Lahore.